28.2.14

THE RUNNERS-UP:

4th RunnerUp-- The earth may spin faster on its
axis due to deforestation. Just as a figure skater's rate of spin
increases when the arms are brought in close to the body, the
cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously fast.

3rd RunnerUp-- Communist China is
technologically underdeveloped because they have no alphabet. The
lack of an alphabet means the Chinese cannot use "acronyms"; thus,
they cannot communicate their ideas at a faster rate.

2nd RunnerUp-- The 'Why Yawning Is Contagious'
Theory: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your eardrums. This
pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear
pressures, so they must yawn to even it all out.

1st RunnerUp-- If an infinite number of
rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an
infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway
signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great literary
works in Braille.

HONORABLE MENTION:

The quantity of consonants in the English language is absolutely
constant. If consonants are omitted in one geographic area, they
turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah", the lost
r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest
in "erl wells."

GRAND PRIZE WINNER:

When a cat is dropped, it ALWAYS lands on its feet; and when toast
is dropped, it ALWAYS lands with the buttered side facing down.
Therefore, I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat.
When dropped, the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground,
probably into eternity. A "buttered-cat array" could replace
pneumatic tires on cars and trucks, and "giant buttered-cat arrays"
could easily allow a high-speed monorail linking New York with
Chicago.

27.2.14

A view of Venus, black dot at top center, passing in front of the sun
during a transit in 2012. A quarter of Americans questioned failed to
answer correctly the most basic questions on astronomy.

A quarter of Americans surveyed could not correctly answer that the
Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, according to
a report out Friday from the NSF.

The survey of 2,200 people in
the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on
Friday.

To the question "Does the
Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26
percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.

In the same
survey, just 39 percent answered correctly (true) that "The universe
began with a huge explosion" and only 48 percent said "Human beings, as
we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."

Just over half understood that antibiotics are not effective against viruses.

As
alarming as some of those deficits in science knowledge might appear,
Americans fared better on several of the questions than similar, but
older surveys of their Chinese and European counterparts.

Only
66 percent of people in a 2005 European Union poll answered the basic
astronomy answer correctly. However, both China and the EU fared
significantly better (66 percent and 70 percent, respectively) on the
question about human evolution.

In a survey compiled by the
National Opinion Research Center from various sources, Americans seemed
to generally support science research and expressed the greatest
interest in new medical discoveries and local school issues related to
science. They were least interested in space exploration, agricultural
developments and international and foreign policy issues related to
science.